


In The Hazy Glow

by intodusk



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coming Out, F/F, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 15:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11293266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intodusk/pseuds/intodusk
Summary: After leaving her closest friend behind, Zelda moves to the city for college. Something comes between her and her studies, though, and she struggles to keep it from unraveling the life she's built for herself.





	In The Hazy Glow

The first time Zelda kisses Link, it’s a nervous and measured moment, a brief brush of her lips on his that leaves her wanting more. She opens her eyes again when it’s over, and the bright flush on his cheeks tells her that he’s just as exhilarated as she is. His hands speak for themselves too, sitting at his sides, wringing the bedsheet, shouting out his nervousness. They’re 16, and neither of them has done anything like this before, and her heart drops into her stomach when she realizes that they’ll likely never get to again, not with each other at least. She wants to keep her attention on the beautiful blue eyes of her closest friend, and not on the suitcase full of neatly folded clothes sitting next to them on the bed, or the boxes stacked in the corner. She wants to gently pull him back in by his ponytail for another kiss, wants to stay beside him until her parents have already started the long drive to their new house without her, wants to spend all night letting loose the flustering feelings she’s been damming up for so long.

Zelda wants a lot of things, but her parents are calling from downstairs and she's run out of both time and excuses. With Link’s help, she loads the suitcase and boxes into the car, and when it’s time to leave she pulls him into a tight hug. It’s stiffened some by the unresolved tension between them, but she still gives him a sincere smile when they break the embrace, brushing a strand of long, dirty blonde hair out of his face as he gives her one of his own.

When the road is disappearing into darkness behind her and she’s watching the stars pass ever-so-slowly by, she thinks about that smile, and how the tenderly kind look in his eyes somehow managed to eclipse the heavy-heartedness of it all. She holds the image close in her mind, wraps it around herself for comfort, and drifts off to the hum of the engine.

Eventually Zelda manages to settle into her new life in a small town on the outskirts of the greater Hyrule area. She’s a long ways from Link in Kakariko, but the two of them promise to keep in touch, and for a while, they do. She texts him about her new school and her favorite classes, and he sends her pictures of their mutual friends back home, as well as every dog he sees, and neither of them mentions the kiss. They message one another just as much as they did before, and she begins to think that the move may not have changed much at all.

In time, though, life comes between them, and their conversations become less frequent and more stilted. Zelda gets caught up in her classwork and college applications, and Link becomes increasingly distant and reserved in his texts. She’s known him long enough to recognize when something’s upsetting him, but each time she asks if he’s alright, he insists that nothing’s wrong. She takes it as a sign that their friendship has run its course, that the physical distance between them is making the strain of maintaining their emotional bonds too stressful for him, and despite how much she wants to help, she begins to check in less and less. By the time she graduates high school, they haven’t spoken in weeks, and though she still misses her best friend, she doesn’t want to weigh on his heart.

College brings with it a flurry of new experiences. It’s another big move, for one thing: she travels by train, gripping a punched ticket tight in her coat pocket, watching from the window as the new home she’d only just gotten to know gives way to yet another unfamiliar place. She rents an apartment in the heart of Hyrule City so she can be close to campus, and it takes weeks before she’s truly gotten the hang of living on her own. It takes longer still to adjust to the bustling urban life of such a huge city, but in time she learns how to flow with its frantic current, and even finds it complimentary to her own driven personality. Her classes turn out to be much the same in that regard, providing all sorts of new and intriguing subjects to study while also proving to be challenging enough to keep her engaged. She makes new friends, gets coffee with them, crams for tests with them, stays up late discussing politics and social theory with them. When one asks her for help with interpreting a complicated chapter, she responds that she’d be happy to help. When another wants to know who her favorite authors are, she lists off ten because she simply can’t choose between them, and when one pokes and prods her about what kind of guy makes her heart flutter, she insists that she’s too caught up in her schoolwork to be distracted by romance. She assumes the fact that she hasn’t had a crush on any boy since Link is rather normal for a busy young woman in college, even though most of her friends talk about the boys they like rather often, even though she gets her classwork done so quickly that she'd easily be able to see someone on the weekends if she wanted to.

It isn’t until after Zelda meets Impa that she begins to think there might be another reason for her disinterest. She’s the TA for one of Zelda’s many history courses, so the two speak on a weekly basis, though hardly about any personal affairs. Instead, they spend their time after class discussing the lecture materials to a degree of depth that would put the textbook writers themselves to shame. Zelda is delighted to finally have someone who can keep up with her, even if the other woman is a little strange, with her intense eyeliner and unapologetically steely demeanor. Her hair is particularly striking, cropped close to the scalp and dyed a tone of blonde that's almost white, standing out like dawn’s light against her dark skin. In a way, though, Zelda looks up to Impa for her strangeness, admires the older woman’s confidence, hopes to learn to be so bold herself someday.

The two of them are in the midst of a particularly long-winded discussion regarding trade routes and the malleability of iconography when the lights in the otherwise empty lecture hall suddenly flick off, and it takes them both a moment to realize they’ve overstayed the building’s automatic lighting timer. Zelda's lighthearted laughter breaks the sudden silence, and Impa uses the moonlight gleaming through the window to gather up the essays she still needs to grade into her bag.

Once they’ve made their way out of the building, Zelda jokingly asks, “I don’t suppose all that talking might net me extra credit on my participation grade?”

Every smirk she manages to coax out of the otherwise stern and serious Impa feels like an accomplishment. “You say that as if you would even need it. It’s not possible to get a higher grade than A+, you know.”

Zelda shoots back a playful grin of her own. “Maybe that’s only because no one’s tried hard enough.”

“I suppose if anyone could somehow break our grading system, it would be the girl who spends her free time going over the finer details of ancient Hylian politics with the TA,” Impa concedes. She then checks the time on her phone and casually says, “Ah, I should be going. My girlfriend will worry if I’m not home before ten.”

It takes a moment for the implications of the word ‘girlfriend’ to hit Zelda completely, and when realization jolts through her, she stiffens. Impa notices, and in an instant the smirk disappears and her expression hardens into a glare. “Is there a problem?”

Heat jumps into Zelda’s cheeks, and she starts to fumble over her words. “Oh! N-no, it’s just… I guess I never really thought something like that was possible, or an option, or-”

“Have you never met someone like me before?” Impa asks, raising a brow.

Zelda’s eyes meet the ground between them. “No, I haven't.” Her brow furrows as pressing and unfamiliar feelings twist around inside her. Then, something between confusion and hope rises into her throat, and she looks up to ask, in a tense and tenuous tone, “How did you know?”

This gives Impa pause, and a bit of frigidity melts away from her face into a look Zelda can’t quite place, somewhere by the borders of caution and concern. She takes out a piece of paper from her bag, writes something on it, folds it up neatly and hands it to Zelda.

“My number. I'm busy tonight, but… if you have questions, contact me there.”

Impa turns to walk away, but only goes a few steps before turning back to Zelda and saying, “I didn’t know, not for a long time. But I had someone to help me figure it out, and that made it all much less daunting than it would have been otherwise.”

When Impa is pulling out of the parking lot, Zelda looks back at the neatly folded paper in her hands, holding it as though it would disappear with the night’s wispy breeze if her grip wavered for a moment. She puts it in her jacket pocket when she starts walking toward the bus stop but still doesn’t let go, even when the E line arrives and she’s forced to sift awkwardly through her bag with her off hand, rummaging for her student ID. Her whole body feels like it’s being pulled taut at the nerves and thoughts swim in her head the way salmon struggle upstream, even when she’s watching the city pass by, even when she’s lying in bed. She almost considers calling an old number to look for reassurance but thinks better of it. Agitation drives any chance of sleep away until finally, finally, she resolves to take Impa up on her offer, first thing next morning.

If Impa is annoyed at Zelda for calling her at eight a.m. on a sunday, she doesn’t let it affect her tone, remaining as patient as always while the younger woman stumbles through questions. Zelda has never in her life had so much trouble asking for help with understanding something, and she becomes rather embarrassed by the sudden shift in their dynamic, but Impa is nothing less than entirely obliging. She’s clearly letting Zelda navigate this at her own pace, and realizing that gives her a welcome, if still tenuous, sense of comfort.

She asks about Impa’s own experiences first: what were the hints, when did she begin to recognize them, who did she talk to about it all? Impa answers each one in turn: she recounts the unsatisfying relationships, the long nights of troubled contemplation, the friend she first found at a bar who helped everything click into place. Once she’s painted a thorough enough picture of her past, she subtly moves the focus onto Zelda, and what she’s been dealing with herself. Unlike Impa’s recollections, hers lack the conciseness of practiced retrospection, but she does her best to think of the points in her life when that invisible, monolithic force she’d been unable to name seemed to get in her way. She talks about how alienated she felt whenever her friends’ conversations turned to boys, how frustrating it was to find herself unattracted to any of them, how confusing it all became when she’d see a beautiful woman somewhere and get overwhelmed by unplaceable emotions. At one point, she nervously brings up the boy she’d left behind, the only boy she’d ever really felt something for, and Impa must have heard the slight wavering in her voice because she immediately assures her that exceptions do happen, for one reason or another, and that they didn’t make everything else she was going through any less legitimate. Something in Zelda relaxes at that, and she unclenches a fist she doesn’t remember forming.

When it’s time for Impa to start working on a presentation for one of her graduate seminars, Zelda realizes she can’t bottle all this up until monday, not now that her dam’s been burst, and she asks Impa for help figuring out where to go from here. There’s a thoughtful pause over the line before she suggests that Zelda visit a bar downtown that she refers to as “The Palace,” her phrasing ripe with the implication that she’ll be in good company there.

Just past midday, Zelda meets up with a study group at one of the campus-adjacent cafes, but despite her best efforts to concentrate on the discussion, her attention is solidly anchored elsewhere, sunk deep into her core and caught on thoughts of the night ahead. She drifts into images of what she thinks the bar might look like, along with its patrons. She wonders if any (or all) of them dress the way Impa does, if they have their hair cut short like hers, if they're all as confident in their own skin as she is. It’s only when someone nudges her shoulder that she realizes she’s been silently staring at nothing for the last handful of minutes, and although the notion that her friends somehow knew exactly what was on her mind is absurd, the very idea begins to beleaguer her, and a thin layer of panic begins to flood the pit of her gut. Someone mentions how unusual it is that she’s not spearheading the session the way she usually does, and another asks if she’s feeling alright, and Zelda almost considers opening up to them about what’s making her stomach roil. Instead, she makes up an excuse about a paper being due before excusing herself and heading home early. When she’s back at her apartment, she boils some water for tea and berates herself again and again for dropping the opportunity.

In the evening, she takes two buses to get near the address Impa gave her, smoothing out her long skirt compulsively and watching out the window as the city flies by in a blur of light, steel, and concrete. She walks the rest of the way like she’s trudging through snow, leaning forward, fixing her eyes on the ground in front of her, doing her best to ignore the people passing by. It's only once she reaches a patch of sidewalk awash in bright blue light that she finally looks up.

The Twilight Palace is unmistakable. Even if the buzzing neon sign above the door didn’t spell out its name, the ornate stony grey exterior, etched with swirling patterns, displays its decorative motif with almost excessive pomp and places it in stark contrast with the mundane faces of the restaurant on its left and the laundromat to its right. Dark tinted windows give a muted, glowing promise of yet more blue neon inside, and the polished mahogany double doors spill over with muffled music and the scent of alcohol.

The inside proves to be exactly what the outside promised. The moment Zelda pulls one of the doors open, a thrumming wave of electric bass she’d swear she can physically feel washes over her, supplemented by punchy rock drums and a moody guitar riff. She sinks into the sounds to find an almost excessive amount of neon blue geometric patterns covering the walls. Were there any other light sources in the bar, the combined brightness might be blinding, but as things are, the whole space is only made dimly visible by their hazy glow, like a moon-lit grove.

The patrons of the palace blend seamlessly with the atmosphere; the handful sitting at the currently untended bar are all sharing an easy banter through the music, slightly stooped on their stools and relaxed the way one is in a favorite reading chair. Each one dons a style that defies Zelda's expectations for different reasons: some look like they could have just gotten here from a day job in any given storefront or office building, and others look so drastically disconnected from anything she's ever seen before that it takes her mind some moments to catch up with what her eyes are seeing. There are pencil skirts and unbuttoned flannels, blazers and ripped skinny jeans, fishnets and tattered band tees, and all sorts of mixes and matches that are all just as alien and just as intriguing. What little she can see of those tucked away in the booths along the opposite wall only further piques her curiosity, one pair sitting especially close to one another and a second shamelessly playing footsie under the table. Zelda can almost make out the sound of lips smacking under all the other noises, and the thought sparks something heated and hard to ignore in her chest. 

On the way over, Zelda had convinced herself that her very presence would disturb the sanctity of the bar, that her entrance would draw judgement from the regulars like a freshman waltzing into a postgrad discussion section, but now that she's actually here, the only person who seems to have noticed her at all is the waitress walking up to greet her. She bears the most striking appearance of anyone in the place; intricate tattoos crawl across her long, slender arms, and her bright tangerine hair breaks up the dusky dimness of the bar like a sunset’s final fiery ray. Zelda has to look up to meet the woman's gaze, something she rarely has to do, and to top it all off she's intimidatingly pretty, and her daringly low-cut top and confident stride say she knows it.

She gives Zelda a polite, playful smile and asks, “Welcome to the Palace, you want booth or bar?”

“Oh, bar I guess.”

The waitress gives Zelda a once-over, then rests a thin wrist on a cocked hip and says, “I don't think I've seen you here before, this your first time at the Twi’?”

Zelda gives her a conceding smile and asks in as nonchalant a tone as she can manage, “Was it that obvious?”

She lets out a light snicker. “Nah, I just know most everyone that comes in here, so if someone I don't recognize shows up, I usually figure they're a first-timer. Most of our first-timers become regulars anyways though, so I like to get introductions done right off the bat. Name's Midna.”

The sudden familiarity lets a little tension slip out of Zelda's posture as she gives Midna her own name in return and extends a hand.

Amusement lights up Midna’s face in a wide, sly grin, along with some other, more masked reaction Zelda can't quite trace, but the waitress takes her hand anyways, shaking it more vigorously than Zelda was ready for. “Welcome to the Twi’ Pal’, Zelda. Go ahead and sit wherever you like at the bar, our ‘tender is on a quick break but she'll be back in a few. And don't stress too much, girl. I'm sure you'll find something you like here. Everyone does.” She leans in conspiratorially and says, in a low voice behind the back of her hand, “Usually that something is me, but really, who can blame them?”

Zelda can't help but giggle at that, and when Midna gets called away to one of the booths, she finds a stool at the far end of the bar near what looks like a door to a kitchen, still not quite ready to introduce herself to any other beautiful women just yet. She plans to at least drown the rest of her nerves in hard cider first, and hopes it doesn't take too many bottles to accomplish that. It's only after a minute or two of waiting for the bartender to return that she realizes Midna might have been flirting with her, and the amount of necessary drinks suddenly spikes. She's never been flirted with by a woman before, and this is all so new to her that she isn't entirely sure what was just friendly wait staff behavior and what might have been some secret signal or unspoken question she'd failed to pick up on. There was a look, a glint of something in her eyes when she and Zelda shook hands, but she didn't get the feeling that it was flirtatious. Then again, she thinks, what else could it have been?

The door behind the bar swings open, breaking her concentration. Zelda straightens up as a woman she assumes is the bartender steps out, absentmindedly drying her hands with a rag as she walks. Zelda is about to get her attention and order a drink when she notices the thigh-high stockings lining the length of her legs, and suddenly the room feels warmer and the words catch in her throat like so much molasses. When she looks back up, the bartender is looking back at her, mouth hanging slightly open, blue eyes gone wide under her bangs and the oversized hoodie she's wearing. Blushing furiously, Zelda tries to stammer out an apology for staring at the other girl, but she stops herself when it dawns on her that those eyes almost look familiar, and she could swear she's seen that dirty blonde hair before. Only, back then, it wasn't twisted into double braids, didn't drape over the collarbone, and definitely never rested on the slope of a pair of breasts.

Just as she's about to speak up, this girl, who couldn't possibly be Link, who couldn't be anyone but Link, turns on her heel and walks right back through the door she'd just come out of. Zelda stares blankly at it, paralyzed by bewilderment and shock, until it opens again. The impossible Link takes her hand and pulls her off the stool, avoiding eye contact as she drags Zelda through the kitchen, past the other workers, and into the employee bathroom. She locks the door behind them, then turns to face Zelda again. Stern blue eyes look up into hers like they're searching her expression for something, and the scrutiny starts to make her nervous, but a moment later that glare subsides into a look both pained and relieved as she pulls Zelda into a tight hug.

Reeling from all the emotional whiplash, Zelda hesitates, hands hovering over forest green fabric before lightly returning the embrace. The voice that half-whimpers into her shoulder is a little higher than she remembers it, but still just as soft, saying, “I missed you,” with a raw tenderness that resonates in Zelda’s core. Reservations peel away and she gives in, squeezing back just as desperately as she needs to. Even as her arms grow tired, she’s reluctant to pull away, but the buzzing questions swarming her thoughts soon become impossible to ignore, and she backs up, holding the shoulders of her oldest friend just far enough away that the two can talk face to face.

“I just… I don’t understand what’s going on. Link, I’m so confused and-”

Those blue eyes suddenly take on a look of steely, almost defiant determination. “Linkle. It’s Linkle now.”

This give Zelda pause. “O-oh, alright.” She tries out the name in her own mouth, testing how it feels like she’s sampling an unfamiliar dish. “Linkle…” She then finishes her thought, almost pleadingly. “Linkle, today has been a complete whirlwind of new things, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d help me understand this whole situation.”

Linkle looks down and sighs, then nods and says, “I guess I have a lot of explaining to do, huh?”

Before Zelda can respond, Linkle pulls away and takes a seat on the tile, back leaning against the door and hand patting the ground. “This’ll probably take a while. And don’t worry about germs or whatever, we keep this place super clean.”

Zelda complies, but still checks the spot for grime before folding her legs underneath her, careful to keep her skirt orderly. When she’s settled, she turns to Linkle, who stares at the wall opposite them instead of meeting her gaze.

“When you left, it took me a long time to adjust. I mean, we’d known each other so long that when you weren't there anymore, it felt like a part of me had gone away with you. For a while I just sort of drifted through days, going through the motions and hoping you’d just sort of come back one day, back in your old house and our classes and my life like nothing had happened. You didn't, of course, and I felt so empty inside that it hurt, and, pretty selfishly, I almost started to blame you for it.”

Linkle shifts, arms folding over knees, eyes focused in on the tiles. “But after a month or two I realized that emptiness wasn't actually anything new, I just didn't have you around to help distract me from it anymore. It'd always been there, just sort of lingering in my head, y’know? So I did a lot of thinking, trying to figure out why I felt so awful, but every bit and piece I came to recognize scared me. Like, legit  _ terrified _ me. I didn’t know how to handle it, so I shut myself off from everyone and moved to the city after graduation. Things got… a lot worse from there. I'll spare you the nitty-gritty of it all, just- let's leave it at ‘it wasn't good.’”

Something tense and unsteady seeps into Linkle’s face, but it gets swept behind a light smile. “Then I met Midna. You, uh, you probably met her out there, right? She was pretty much the first friend I made out here. She helped me through the whole process of sussing out what was going on with me, and after a lot of long nights and tough conversations, I finally figured myself out.”

Linkle turns to Zelda and looks her in the eyes, expression steadfast, tone unwavering. “I'm a girl.”

Before Zelda can respond, Linkle gives her a lopsided smirk and says, “I know that part was kind of obvious,” gesturing loosely to herself, “but I thought I owed you something more concrete.”

Zelda tries to find something to say, but succeeds only in staring dumbly. Muffled music from the barfront slips under the door to fill the silence until she finally replies. “I think that was the most I've ever heard you say at once.”

That sets Linkle alight with a giggle fit that borders on cackling. When she's settled down again, she says, “You're probably right, yeah. Really, though, no questions or anything? I kinda figured you'd have a ton of questions. I mean, most people do, and you're way more curious than most people.”

Zelda leans the side of her head against the door. “Honestly, on any other day that would probably be the case, but with everything else that's happened between yesterday and today, I'm doing my best to just roll with it all. I mean, I’m still definitely out of my depth with this. I don’t think I completely get it, and I’ll probably mess some things up at first, but this clearly means a lot to you, and... “ Her brow furrows as she tries to condense her feelings into words, like she’s sweeping up a lake into a dustpan. “And I really don’t want to lose you again. Especially right now, having a friend I can trust would mean the world to me.”

It seems that the implications of Zelda’s presence at the Twilight Palace have only just caught up to Linkle, and she perks up in realization. “Oh! Oh my god, that’s right!” A toothy grin splits her lightly freckled cheeks. “Spill the beans girl, I want the whole story.”

Zelda has to stifle a laugh. “It’s a pretty short story. I mean, I only just found out about all this-” she gestures vaguely with her hand “-today, and it’s sort of like I’m playing catch-up with everyone else here, but…” Breath swells in deep in her chest. “But it feels  _ right." _

Linkle places a knowing hand over hers, a welcome warmth against the cool tile, and the two share a moment of comfortable silence.

Zelda is the first to break it. “Is it alright if I say I’m glad my first crush turned out to be a girl?”

Linkle smiles at her, openly and sweetly. “As long as I get to tell you how satisfying it is knowing the first girl I kissed turned out to be gay.”

That smile rings like a shot through Zelda’s head, echoing deeper than thoughts, resonating with the abstractions etched into her core. It snakes through stools and sounds, wraps around worn eyeliner pencils and stolen smirks, and pushes against cracked concrete. She feels like her whole body is underwater, but she pushes through it and lifts her other hand anyway, cups her oldest friend’s soft cheek in her fingers anyway.

The second time Zelda kisses Linkle, it’s a passioned and impatient thing, a sudden press of her lips onto the other girl’s that ignites something blazingly needy in her. Linkle’s eyes shoot open in surprise, then sink into a heavy-lidded daze as she melts into Zelda’s touch. Arms wrap tight around bodies with the third kiss, fists ball up fabric with the fourth, and the fifth brings them both down to the tile. She loses track after that, unable to focus on anything but the girl beneath her, and the music leaking under the door thumps as rapid and heavy as her heartbeat.

She's tugging gently on a blonde braid when a knock shakes the door, followed by Midna’s voice. Linkle breaks away for a moment, but before she can reply, Zelda speaks up, says that they're fine, they just need a little more time. When she's gone, the two tangled on the bathroom floor share a pair of conspiratorial grins and keep going as if they'd never stopped.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning on writing at least one or two more chapters, and depending on how they end up I might keep going. Stay tuned!


End file.
